Why is this an issue?

Throwing such general exceptions as Exception, SystemException, ApplicationException, IndexOutOfRangeException, NullReferenceException, OutOfMemoryException and ExecutionEngineException prevents calling methods from handling true, system-generated exceptions differently than application-generated errors.

Noncompliant code example

Public Sub DoSomething(obj As Object)
  If obj Is Nothing Then
    ' Noncompliant
    Throw New NullReferenceException("obj")
  End If
  ' ...
End Sub

Compliant solution

Public Sub DoSomething(obj As Object)
  If obj Is Nothing Then
    Throw New ArgumentNullException("obj")
  End If
  ' ...
End Sub

Resources

• MITRE, CWE-397 - Declaration of Throws for Generic Exception